Chef shows winning edge

Buckhead chef Suzanne Vizethann received some strange ingredients in her recent appearance on the Food Network’s “Chopped” show.

Her appetizer entry involved brown bread in a can and, um, duck testicles. Just perfect for a tasty bread pudding she quickly threw together.

Vizethann, co-owner of the Hungry Peach catering and takeout business in Buckead, showed the same creativity with two other courses to outlast her competition and win the $10,000 prize. On the show, the chefs are given a mystery basket of three ingredients for each course and must come up with a dish. After each round, one of the four contestants is “chopped” from the show.

“It was pretty stressful, but a lot of fun,” Vizethann said.

Vizethann, along with co-owner Conor Hubbard, displays her food inventiveness with traditional Southern dishes at The Hungry Peach, which serves gourmet boxed lunches to workers at the Atlanta Decorative Arts Center in Peachtree Hills. The business also does catering "24-7" and sells wholesale products, primarily to Buckhead’s Lucy’s Market.

She enjoys taking Southern favorites and “putting a twist on them,” such as her peach cobbler cupcake. Other hits are her “mastered” pimento cheese, taking off from the famous dish served at the Masters at Augusta National and her sweet basil chicken salad. The “Mastered” pimento cheese and the chicken salad are sold at Lucy’s Market. Another favorite is homemade bagel chips, prepared from leftover breakfast bagels.

“Everything we use we try to recycle and use again, or use in a different form,” she said.

The environment at ADAC, with 75 different decorator designer showrooms, has been perfect for the business in the nearly two years it’s been at the location, she said. Along with box lunches, she caters corporate meals and events. With a built-in clientele and word-of-mouth recommendations, ADAC is “a great place for us to grow. We’re not putting a lot of marketing dollars into it.”

She’s happy with the Hungry Peach’s business model.  “I don’t want to have a  full restaurant,” she said. “I want to expand on more of the prepared food and box lunches.”

The $10,000 she won on “Chopped” has long been spent, she says.  The show recently broadcast was actually taped in November during a day in New York.

Some of the money was spent on her working for free in six or seven New York restaurants to gain experience. “ I was working under different chefs and in different kitchens to see how other businesses operate.” She also wrote a blog about her “stages” working in different restaurants, including such well-known ones as Grammercy Tavern and the 3-star Le Bernardin.

Now, she’s bringing those experiences to “The Hungry Peach,” where she strives each day to fulfill its motto, “simple, fresh, fun, just the way we like it.”